House Tour

We've always been a little defensive about our decision to live in To Kwa Wan (it's local, it's got character, it's conveniently a 5 minute walk to the school). Well, you can't really argue with the last point, but other than that, we LOVE Tsing Yi, and it is about a billion times better than living in To Kwa Wan. No regrets.

We wake up to birds chirping instead of sirens blaring. Our place is so much bigger. Our view is so much better. We are conveniently on top of a mall and the MTR station. We can step outside onto a lovely promenade. There's grass. Parks. Trees. Playgrounds. Kids that speak English playing at the playground. Oh yeah, and waterslides. They're just not open yet. 

We wondered if living on top of a mall would be weird or annoying, but it's not- it's actually good. You barely step into it to get into the entrance of our building, so you don't have to walk through it if you don't want to. But there's a lot of convenience right there- our bank branch, a big grocery store, a couple of drug stores, Starbucks, McD's (and McCafe), KFC, a Thai restaurant, an Italian restaurant, a bunch of Chinese restaurants, a movie theatre, a furniture store, some electronics stores, lots of unfamiliar names, but other familiar names like the Body Shop, Zara, Clinique, etc. 

And as soon as you go up to our estate, there's a lovely podium that you walk through- but I don't have any pictures of that. 

 This is the "dining room". I scored that table from the lady I bought our bed frame from for free. It's about double the size of the old glass sparkly table, which the girls miss, but we don't. And my lovely Chinese antique cabinet that may or may not come back to Canada with us.

 And looking the other direction at the living room. We definitely feel that the room is longer and wider with a lot more space for the girls to play. We still want to get a cabinet with more storage to put next to the couch. And some curtains would be nice, but they aren't a big priority at the moment. 

 A kitchen with cabinets ON BOTH SIDES! It's amazing how much difference the extra counter space makes and the luxury of having room for all of our groceries. Maybe now I can actually get a slow cooker and a few other gadgets that I didn't have only because of lack of storage in our other kitchen. It isn't the nicest or newest, but it feels a lot better after scrubbing it down. I think there was a lot of deep-frying that occurred in it's previous life. 

 One of the two (!) bathrooms. Again, not the nicest or fanciest, but we realized that of the six dwellings that Mike and I have lived since we got married, this is the first time we've ever had an ensuite. Movin' up in the world! 

 The girls room, which is actually smaller than their last. Mostly just room for their bunk beds. At least they fit- they are smaller than standard size. Why they make rooms so tiny that a normal bed wouldn't fit in them just doesn't make any sense to us!

 Bedroom #3 which has a closet for the girls and at the moment just the playmobil. There is room to put a keyboard/piano in it, so I think we'll probably make that purchase sometime soon. 

 Our room with our new bed frame. Isn't that a cool design for the headboard (Ikea)? I don't know if I would have chosen that one if I hadn't been shopping second-hand, but i actually quite like it. 

 And our new-to-us bedroom furniture. Our last bedroom basically just had room for the bed, so this feels very spacious. It's hard to remember a time where our walk-in closet in Spruce Grove was the size of one of these bedrooms! 

 But the most exciting thing in our bedroom is the big windows and the view. We hadn't even noticed the park (the green on the right side) until we moved in and noticed that we could see a waterfall and people walking around it. 

It really is nice to wake up to this in the morning. And the night-time view is not too bad, either! That's the Tsing Yi Sports ground where we can see soccer games going on, and the waterslides in the public pool. Our clubhouse as a pool as well, but I don't think any of them open until April or May. 

 This is the park that we could see across the way. Very easy to get to... yeah... Sorry To Kwa Wan...but you've got nothing like this!

 (That's Tierra Verde through the trees.) 

This is just off of the promenade. A nice open space for the girls to skip and run around. 

So that's our news with our move. It feels good to be settled in, and it's fun to have new things close to us to explore. We had our second thoughts about it all (Rita heard lots of complaining and fretting and second-guessing from me while she was here!), but we honestly are really glad that it's all worked out!

And spring break is right around the corner and we have a new adventure coming up! We weren't planning on going anywhere, but when I heard that my friend Emily was traveling, I texted her to see where she was going, because she always goes interesting places. She responded with "we're taking an overnight train to Guilin, China. Wanna come?'

I hadn't even heard of Guilin before, but this immediately had me interested because:

1. I really like Emily and her family and it would be so fun to go on a trip with them. 

2. They are extremely adventurous and ambitious when it comes to traveling (ie. picture holding a baby in front of the pyramids in Egypt- they truly have been all over the world), so we could see more of China with people who actually know what they're doing!

3. Hello... overnight train?! I've always wanted to try traveling like that, but haven't had the opportunity till now. 

So I went home and told Mike about the conversation, and he google-imaged Guilin and this is what came up:

Needless to say, it didn't take much to convince him. Seeing the terraced rice fields would be a dream come true! It feels like we are planning this on the fly because you can't buy train tickets very far in advance, so Emily's husband is going to Shenzhen this weekend to buy them, while we are scrambling to get our Chinese visas in order. And we haven't even booked accommodations yet. But... I'm sure it will come together, right?! Stay tuned...

Philippines Pt. 3- Imperial Palace

Wow, this already feels like so long ago. February is flying by!  Since getting back we did some apartment hunting, found a flat, set the move date for March 8, and had Rita visit for about 10 days. I almost forgot to post the last section of our pictures of the second half of our trip when we stayed at Imperial Palace. 

 This was our first lunch at one of the restaurants at the resort. We hadn't initially planned to stay here at all, but there was a mix-up in the booking at Plantation Bay where they were all booked up for one of the nights we were there, so we ended up splitting our time between this one and Plantation Bay. Even though we hadn't planned for that, I think that's a good way to go so that you can see more than one place- I may try and do that more in the future. 

 Checking out the new room. Very Best Western-ish.

 We were a little bummed we didn't have a view of the ocean, but actually it was neat to have a "local" view of Cebu from the 11th floor.

 Picture perfect weather!

 Even though Mike and I preferred the beauty of Plantation Bay, the girls were completely opposite. Imperial Palace had this water-park, water-slides and a lazy river. No competition in their minds! 

 These guys liked to get the Koreans (I hadn't mentioned yet, but Imperial Palace is owned by Koreans and I would imagine that 85% of the guests staying there were Korean. Random, eh?) to get some exercise and have some fun doing aerobics. Annika was eager to join in... it was so funny!

 There was a swim-up bar, and the girls thought it was the coolest thing ever to have lunch while swimming in the pool!

 We took advantage of the kids club and paid for the girls to spend a couple of hours there one afternoon. The girls were excited to play, and we enjoyed relaxing by the pool without any worries. It was lovely, but we were excited to pick them up when the time was up. Annika said it was the best day ever! 

 We also tried leaving the resort to see more of Cebu. It was pretty crazy with traffic and sights and sounds.

 We found a Korean restaurant across the street and had lunch there. It was so Korean! We really had no idea that there was such a Korean presence in Cebu. 

Good-bye, beautiful Cebu! Wish we could have seen even more, but thankful we were able to visit!

Philippines Pt. 2- Bohol Day trip

 After a fairly hurried morning trying to get to the pier on time to catch the ferry to Bohol Island, we finally got to relax! This ferry was pretty decent and it was a two hour-long trip to get to the Island of Chocolate Hills and Tarsiers!

 Once we got to Bohol, Uncle Ma-Eng- our personal hired driver for the day picked us up at the pier. This is not a picture of the vehicle he drove us in all day. This is a "jeepny" that is basically larger than a taxi and smaller than a bus. It is all open air and you enter the jeepny from the back I believe.

 Another jeepny loaded to the max. "Hold on!"

 After about a 40 minute drive through winding roads we arrived at the tarsier sanctuary. "Hold on!"

 These little guys are kind of cute and kind of strange looking. But very small and peaceful.

 Annika trying to get a closer look at the tarsier. "But that's Mommy with the camera!"

 There were lots of concrete steps to walk up and down to get around this sanctuary of tarsiers. There were several tarsiers that we saw throughout our time there. I'd say at least a dozen. And there were dozens of people taking pictures with the tarsiers, of the tarsiers, and around the tarsiers.

 Someone even took a picture of us in the same vicinity of the tarsiers.

 This was on the way from the tarsiers to the Chocolate Hills. This is a man-made forest of mahogany trees. It really reminded us of Canada. There's lots of mahogany forests in Canada. All over the place. Just kidding - but the look and feel of the forrest reminded us of Canada.

 See what I mean?

 And here's a field of rice. Also, just like Canada.

 Some rice drying on the side of the road. A cow sidestepping the rice.

 Here's that cow I was talking about.

 Ahhh - the famous Chocolate Hills!

 We had to hike up one of the hills to take in the scenery.

 Did I mention it was kind of sunny out? A really beautiful day. It looked like it was maybe going to rain earlier in the day, but the rain held off for the day.

 The view from the other side of the hill. There in the corner of the picture is the restaurant we had great lunch at.

 I forgot to mention - the reason they are called "Chocolate Hills" is because in the summer they are brown. So they look like chocolate. We were there when they were a healthy green.

"I can't believe they're not made of chocolate!"

 "I can."

A little place etched into the side of the hill for the Catholic pilgrims.

 The Janzens feeling pretty fed up after having our lunch at the restaurant. Our nice driver took this picture.

 It was quite the hurried drive back to the pier to catch our ferry. We managed to board the ferry within minutes of it taking off. A little too close for comfort for us, but our driver seemed to be really confident that he'd get us there on time. Even though he kept suggesting more touristy things for us to see on our drive back to the pier!

"We love you Pacific Ocean blue
Yeah we love you Pacific Ocean Blue
Oh we love you Pacific Ocean Blue
Oh we love you Pacific Ocean Blue
It's no wonder the Pacific Ocean is blue." - Dennis Wilson of "The Beach Boys"